Anthelmintic drugs used in equine species

Abstract Internal parasites of horses comprise an intractable problem conferring disease, production and performance losses. Parasitism can rarely be controlled in grazing horses by management alone and anthelmintic drugs have formed the basis of therapy and prophylaxis for the last sixty years. The pharmacology of the anthelmintic drugs available dictate their spectrum of activity and degree of efficacy, their optimal routes of administration and characteristics which prevent some routes of administration, their safety tolerance and potential toxicities and as a consequence of their persistence in the body at effective concentrations their use in epidemiological control programmes. Their use has also resulted in the selection of parasites with genetically controlled characteristics which reduce their susceptibility to treatment, characteristics which are often common to whole chemical classes of anthelmintics. Pharmacological properties also confer compatibility in terms of safety and persistence with other anthelmintic drugs and thus the potential of combinations to treat parasites from different phylogenetic groups such as nematodes, cestodes and trematodes and also the potential by agency of their different molecular mechanisms of action to delay the selection of resistant genes. The major groups of anthelmintics now available, the benzimidazoles (BZD), macrocyclic lactones (MLs) and tetrahydropyrimidines are all highly effective against their targeted parasites (primarily nematodes for BZD’s and ML’s and cestodes for tetrahydropyrimidines) easily administered orally to horses and are well tolerated with wide margins of safety. Nevertheless, some parasitic stages are inherently less susceptible such as hypobiotic stages of the small strongyles (cyathostomins) and for some such as the adult stages of cyathostomins resistance has developed. Furthermore, for some less common parasites such as the liver fluke unlicensed drugs such as the salicylanilide, closantel have been used. A deep understanding of the pharmacology of anthelmintic drugs is essential to their optimal use in equine species.